The Vanishing Left ... one year before the elections

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@cheers

That ‘stifling’ history created your esteemed university which presumably created your title, Mister ‘One’.

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<p>Cute. However, since the religious affiliation of the university effectively ended in 1812, when the seminary broke off from the rest, and since the university has only really become a world (or even national) leader since 1868, I think it’s very safe to say that religion didn’t play any particular causative role.</p>

[BedHead]

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I believe that before ou country turns the keys to the White House to a bird of different feathers we ought to explore what hides behind the innocent plumage, and wonder how much of the exposed agenda might become part of our daily life. </p>

<p>Is a a country that is strongly pro-labor, seeks to rebuild the union movement, and wants to base its future on an exclusive secular education really the United States of the … future?

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You sure have a high opinion of yourself, Mr. Bedhead.

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<p>Well, Xiggi, I’d give that right back at you. You made some vast statement about how much the Left’s hidden agenda is now becoming exposed. I am just taking the fight to your front door – and now I get called arrogant.</p>

<p>Parochial schools and private schools have a much easier mission than do public schools. The presence or lack of god in the curriculum has very little to do with the relative quality of education, so long as religious authorities don’t begin censoring scientific knowledge or various philosophies. What’s much more relevant is how each system deals with the students that no one wants, in terms of deciding the cost-effectiveness of that system. And if you don’t frame it that way, you are missing the point…</p>

<p>Am I anti-parochial school? Not so long as it’s clear that they serve a much narrower mission than our public schools do.</p>

[BedHead]

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I’m simply looking at a call to further reduce --and indirectly attack-- a system of education that has served our country extremely well and is facing huge problem, not to establish its superiority but to ensure its economic survival. </p>

<p>And, fwiw, we are not talking about fat cats here. For instance, the bulk of the parochial schools are operating with very small budgets that are a fraction of what is available at publicly funded schools. Also, many catholic schools do operate in our least privileged neighborhoods and continue to offer alternatives to systems that have failed their “clients.”</p>

<p>We should not let our fear of religious fanaticism blind us in such a way that we can’t separate the good from the bad. In the end, we should support the education systems that perform and reform the ones that fail.

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<p>As I said, I am not anti-parochial school – and in fact within my family will be opting for that system though I don’t hold with its underlying religious values. However, you can’t say one system is failing its clients as another is succeeding – as you do in this paragraph – if you fail to take into account their very missions.</p>

<p>It’s a facile – and incorrect – logical leap taken by people who want to reform our public schools that the different outcomes of the two different school systems prove that one system is better.</p>